


Painless

by ElvenSorceress



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flint is a supportive boyfriend, Frottage, Gap Filler, Love, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Pirate Husbands, References to Canon violence, Silver has a philosophical crisis, bisexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 18:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6206206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvenSorceress/pseuds/ElvenSorceress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Silver kills Dufresne, Flint finds him and comforts him while Silver philosophizes on the nature of their relationship. </p><p>*set during 307*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painless

**Author's Note:**

> *major thanks to the lovely Ellel for beta-ing and not even knowing it XD you're fab, bb. thank you! <3*
> 
>  
> 
> “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”  
> ― Plato, The Symposium

The world is spinning, blurring. His heart is too fast, his breaths are too fast, too heavy, too full of something thick, numbing, and deceptively saccharine. It makes his vision unfocused and everything around him as poorly balanced as the deck of a ship caught in a storm. No way to stay upright, no way to remain steady.

There’s no sense or logic anymore. It’s all an illusion — something false like a dream that appears real, feels real but isn’t. A dream or a nightmare. It’s not clear which. He should be frightened. He should be horrified. 

There should be pain festering inside him. Not one day had passed where he hadn’t been tortured with it. Not for a very long time. His leg should be screaming and turning him into a weak, helpless, crying child. 

But he’s strong. He feels strong. Invincible. As if he’s touched immortality.

What if this could last? What if it could make his pain stop? He’d been so terrified before; he fears death like nothing else. But his existence now is nothing but death, danger, agony. Perhaps this is what tempers it. Being able to wield that suffering instead of remain at its mercy.

It must be why Flint turns to it. Does it ease his pain? Does it quell the shrieking of his demons? Is Flint lost to it in the moment without thought, without reason as Silver had been? The man who beat a mutineer to death with sheer fury couldn’t have been anything but lost to that same rage. 

If Silver had any sense at all, he would have run then and never given him another thought. Sense had escaped him the moment he let his heart have a say. It led him to this. It turned him into the man he’d seen covered in blood and open wounds but victorious over his challenger. 

Flint finds him deep in the belly of the ship. Their ship. As if he knows Silver’s thoughts. Could Flint hear him if they were separated by oceans? How strong is this bond growing between them? How much stronger could it be? Would he know to appear at Silver’s side whenever Silver needed? 

Has he become Flint now? Are they one and the same? Is that why he can no longer tolerate the thought of losing him?

He hadn't known before, but he knows now. The thing that could turn anyone to darkness. “How good it feels,” he tells Flint. It’s freedom. From pain, from taunting, from worthlessness, from all the voices inside and out that tell him he should die. 

How could he not be lost to this? If this is what it feels like to descend, he can’t think of why he shouldn’t plummet. But what will be left of him? What is left of him regardless? “I’ve killed men before. When they attacked me, when they attacked you, when I had to survive. It wasn’t like this.” Nothing was like this. He’d shied away from brutality and violence, he’d wanted his world to be free of it — no cruelty, no attachments, no water, no misery. He’d never succeeded. It had only earned him pain. Until he lashed out and fought back. 

How long will the absence of agony last? Perhaps survival meant succumbing and accepting everything he’d rejected and tried to force from his life. He’s already been irreparably changed, what is left but to embrace it? Will it be easier for him than it is for Flint? He’s never cared what people thought of him. Or is that something that changed in him when his leg was cut off? 

He needs to matter to someone or he will be nothing. Dufresne would be right. His gaze falls from Flint’s, lost in a haze of smoldering embers, an aftertaste of rage. “I thought I understood before. I thought I knew you and what you felt. I couldn’t begin to fathom it. It’s power and revenge and justice for every way you’ve been wronged. It’s far from righteous but it feels that way.” He breathes deeply, still fighting for something even resembling stability and serenity. “It makes everything stop hurting.”

Flint’s voice is mild and soothing like cool water on fevered skin. “That part doesn’t last.”

No, he couldn’t imagine that it would. How else would someone be driven to it again? Thus was the crux of all addictions. More was necessary. 

What will he do when the pain returns? Will it be worse now that he’s had a moment without it? His leg begins to itch and tingle the way it does before it stabs him with crippling, gut-wrenching pain, and how can he bear it any longer? He hates being in pain. He hates it like nothing else. “I don’t want to hurt anymore. I can’t…” His breaths become harder, his chest is broken, and his world is quaking. 

Flint places a hand on his shoulder and grounds him. The world doesn’t spin so quickly. He’s not lost, but he is sinking. The stinging in his leg doesn’t worsen. Silver clutches Flint’s wrist, keeping that touch, keeping Flint.

“Do you know what he said to me?” Would the others have told him? Would they even remember? It wasn’t likely. They wouldn’t recognize the depth of significance. But he has a feeling Flint will. “He said I was unworthy, undeserving of the attention paid to me. He called me half a man. A goddamn invalid. He wanted me to be worthless.”

The hand on his shoulder squeezes. “You are anything but worthless. Or incapable.”

Silver looks and finds Flint’s gaze in the darkness. It’s unguarded, exposed, and he thrums with suppressed rage as much as Silver had. Could Flint be feeling exactly what Silver had in the tavern? Is this empathy? Protectiveness? Proof they’re so tangled in each other that now Flint feels what Silver feels? Or proof of how connected they’ve become that now Flint can’t tolerate such vicious animosity directed toward Silver? 

He doesn’t know what is true regarding the relationship between Flint and Miranda Barlow, there are far too many impossible, mythical stories about them, but Silver can’t remember Flint and Gates having a partnership like this. Flint had respected him, listened to him, but he’d seemed distant and locked away with Gates. There’s something more open and bloody and alive between Flint and Silver. 

When Flint tries to pull his hand away, Silver holds tighter. He moves his leg and tugs until Flint sits down with him, in front of him. His eyes are sorrowful, guilty, lonely, but he’s also warm and solid and Silver could so easily lean into him and feel all that strength wrapped around him.

And he wants to. What has he wanted before this? Nothing compares, nothing has ever been this much. He curls his fingers into Flint’s coat and holds on, unwilling to let go. “I’ve never felt this. I’ve never been so close to anyone. But I feel you. I know you. I wonder if I am you now. I wonder if you experienced something similar.” 

Flint’s eyes travel over him, but he doesn’t speak. There’s pain etched into his face and his hands are clenched into tight fists, touching only his own thighs. Who was Flint before Silver knew him? What was left of the man he’d been?

Silver pulls himself closer until he can fill his lungs with the smell of Flint’s body and bask in the warmth coming off him. It’s deep and potent and he’s so inexplicably taken with it. “I never understood how anyone could need another person. Truly need them. For something more than an advantage or assistance or sex. But a need that’s beyond flesh and bone, beyond anything in this existence. I… I feel…” Too much. Words fail him. The rush of killing Dufresne, proving himself, empowering Flint, the reprieve from the pain, the revelatory knowledge of what this sort of darkness means. How close it brings him to Flint. How much it makes him need. 

Flint asks quietly, “What do you feel?” 

“Something more than need. For you,” Silver whispers and wants to rest his head on Flint’s shoulder. “I feel like I’ve dissolved in you. There is no me without you anymore. And I’m mixed in you as well. As if we’ve become this singular, indissoluble being.”

Flint breathes slowly, deeply, but he doesn’t move away. “I know you were tortured and ripped apart. I know you wake every day in agony and I know you don’t want anyone to see it. But you also survived. There is nothing about you that isn't whole. Even without me.”

“I don’t want to be without you,” Silver is certain now. Whatever fate or destiny or God or the universe had planned for him, he doesn’t know. So many things in his life are irreversible now. Maybe it was all leading to this point. If anything feels meant to be, it’s this. “I never want to be without you. I want to be inseparable. I want everything of me tied with you. It feels like it already is. I’ve never needed anyone, but I need you.” The weight of his confession makes him shake, but it’s no less truth. There’s imminent aching behind it and fear of being crushed and shut out again. But he bends his head until his face is tucked against the curve of Flint’s neck and shoulder.

Flint’s hand moves from his lap and cradles Silver’s head, holding him close. 

Silver closes his eyes and lets out a wracked sob. The affection is too unfamiliar, too needed, too powerful. He clutches Flint tighter and feels him swallow hard. “Is this what love feels like?”

Flint’s body is tense, strung tightly and rigid. Either because he’s uncomfortable and disgusted by this monstrous feeling Silver is keeping, or because he’s not. Flint’s voice is soft, barely more than a whispered secret, “I can’t answer that for you.”

No. But Silver could. He lifts his head from Flint’s shoulder and rests his hand on Flint’s cheek. Flint doesn’t pull away, doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything but watch him with pained eyes, but he lets Silver draw him forward until their lips are pressed together. 

It’s everything and nothing like he expects. It’s not rough or sudden, not cold or quick. It’s not strange, it’s not wrong. Flint doesn’t stop him; he returns the kiss. Gently, softly, sweetly. His lips are warm and his beard prickles, and it’s so different than anything and so much more than Silver imagined because this feels right and resolute, and all of it fills him with waves of rolling, turbulent emotions. What does this mean for him? For them? 

He can’t bring himself to worry about that. Not when Flint is kissing him. Not when his confusion is fading and nothing matters but keeping this. And having more. How can he have more? 

He slides his arms around Flint and pulls himself forward, sinking into the kiss as if it will never be enough. His lips become wet and his heart is out of rhythm. Flint gradually holds him tighter, his hands come to rest on Silver’s sides, then they slide to his back, and then tangle in his hair. Silver grows breathless and flushed with heat. 

There’s no pain any more. No fear of it crashing into him either. What if this is also a remedy?

Flint breaks the kiss but holds tightly to Silver. His breath falls, heavy and warm across Silver’s face, and he trembles as if he feels how much this is, too. When he meets Silver’s gaze, there are questions in his eyes. Ones tinted with worry. It’s so bare and makes him appear years younger and more fragile than the man Silver knows. He’s afraid Silver didn’t find what he needed. He asks without words if Silver found an answer to his question. 

Silver bites his lip and reaches up to trace the contour of Flint’s cheek. “Yes.”

Flint looks at him, searches his eyes, and clenches his hands in Silver’s shirt. “Yes?” It’s so soft and so lost, and Silver was incredibly right about the sorrow and loneliness, and everything else. It was all he had been feeling as well. But no longer. 

Silver nods and wraps Flint in his arms. “Yes.” He kisses him again, never letting go, and pushes until Flint lies backward and beneath him. He sprawls on top and covers Flint in kisses, bestowing them on his cheeks and nose, on his closed eyes, down his neck. Flint lets out sweet, broken, beautiful noises and grips Silver tighter than anyone ever has. He tastes lost and starved when Silver kisses his mouth again and dips his tongue past Flint’s lips, so Silver clings to him and refuses to come up for air. 

He moves over him, rubbing against him and gasps when he finds Flint hard and straining, pressed to Silver’s thigh. He makes a fist in Flint’s shirt on the center of his chest. “You want me?”

Flint breathes hard and still trembles. “Did you think I didn’t?”

No, it’s just different feeling proof. It’s real. Flint wants him. It’s thrilling and terrifying and more than he’s ever felt in his entire existence. “I want you,” he pleads. “I want more.”

Flint’s arms come around him and he pulls Silver close and then rolls him underneath. Silver arches up, craving as much as possible, but Flint strokes his hair and cradles his head, soothing him, calming him. He carefully brings Silver’s legs around him, touching him with tender reverence, and rocks his hips, pressing his hard cock to Silver’s through all their layers of clothes and slowly moving against him. “Like this,” Flint whispers, and Silver writhes and clutches him. 

He moans into Flint’s mouth, already lost in the feel of him even like this. The weight of Flint’s body, the way Silver is surrounded and held tightly, and everything he feels finally has a name. How is the wound of human nature healed but by this? It feels good, so good, it feels like everything falling into place, it feels like pain can never touch him again even if he knows it’s not true. It’s too perfect right now to believe anything else. Flint holds him, kisses his neck, comforts him, drives them both into something blinding and blissful where they never have to be apart for a single moment. 

The need Silver has doesn’t fade even as his arousal washes away in melting warmth. Flint lifts up and looks at him as if maybe he’s waiting for whatever Silver felt to have disappeared. “Are you all right? Did that hurt at all?”

Silver wets dry lips and holds Flint to him with arms and legs. “There’s no pain. I feel good.” Better than he has in a long time and there’s no guilt or existential crisis to go along with it. He rests his hand on Flint’s cheek and watches green eyes flutter closed. “I want to sleep beside you. I want to know what it feels like to have you inside me. And what it’s like to be inside you.” 

Flint places a kiss on Silver’s palm and then on his cheek and it makes Silver’s heart skip like it knows happiness again. “We’ll have time. I’ll give you everything.”

Silver slides his hand around the back of Flint’s neck, rubbing his fingers over the soft, short hair, and brings him into a deep, smoldering kiss. 

Sleep eludes him most of the night though not because of ghosts or fear of what is to come or even from an ache in his leg. He’s cradled in Flint’s arms, Flint's chest is his pillow, and Flint's steady heartbeat drowns out the sound of anything else. Silver rests peacefully, savoring every second, finally painless.


End file.
